


The Lucky Ones

by JustLikeThat



Category: Falling Skies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-24
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2017-11-12 20:03:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/495144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustLikeThat/pseuds/JustLikeThat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maggie's been at the razor's edge of death more times than she can count.  Does that make her lucky to have survived so much or has she simply been dealt a bad hand in life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lucky Ones

**Author's Note:**

> Since the show has never really gone into where Maggie was at the time of the invasion or how she ended up being abducted by Pope's gang, I thought I'd write my own take on her history. There are a few things mentioned that were revealed in Death March, but no real spoilers beyond what happened in The Armory.

It had been the anniversary of being cancer free for yet another year when the aliens attacked Boston. 

More than anyone, Maggie knew what it was like to have life change in an instant. One day you’re a normal sixteen year old – excited to finally have your license, complaining about having too much homework, wondering if the guy you’re into likes you back – and the next you find out that the debilitating migraine headaches you’ve been suffering from for the past year are because you have multiple brain tumors crammed inside your skull. A death sentence at sixteen… was there any worse luck than that? 

A 50/50 chance. That’s what they had given her. Flip a coin – it comes up heads, you live. It comes up tails, game over. Do not pass go. Only place you were going was into that cold dark abyss, or if you believed in heaven, you were hopefully going there. A place with no more pain, Maggie could be down with that. Another year of pain like she’d had, and she would have probably sent herself there on her own. 

They had said she was lucky they caught it before it was too late to do anything about it. 

Yeah, that was Maggie. The luckiest girl in the world. She’d won the lottery on near fatal cancer diagnosis. She certainly felt like Lady Luck while she was lying in a hospital bed, feeling weak, helpless, and near death. Maggie had often joked with the nurses about how lucky she was every time she ran her fingers through her long blonde hair and another clump of it fell out in her hands. If she went to Vegas looking like this, would they take pity on her and let her play a game of Blackjack? After all, it wasn’t like she’d be alive long enough to enjoy her winnings. 

It began to get easier and easier to see how so many cancer patients made peace with death. With every pound she lost from her already thin frame, she felt a little closer. The Grim Reaper was calling her name.

“Margaret,” the reaper beckoned softly, his voice slithering through her consciousness. 

It was strongest when she was sitting in her backyard at night, huddled under layers of sweatshirts to keep her skeletal frame warm. She’d close her eyes, inhale a shaky breath, and he spoke to her in a voice that whispered through the willow trees and stabbed icy daggers straight into her gut.

Or maybe it had just been the pot.

There had been a lot of that. Keeping down her meager dinners was still a challenge with the chemo pumping through her system, but it was like a blanket of blissful apathy. Suddenly, it didn’t matter how sick she was. She’d float away until she felt so distant from her body that it was like astral projection. Was that bald skinny thing smoking a joint really her? 

Sometimes, when she thought about the cancer, it seemed like it had all just been a terrible dream. A dream she hadn’t fully awakened from until she heard those magical words. “We got it all this time, Maggie. You’re in remission.”

And that was that. One more round of chemotherapy, just to be sure, and she was clear. Her hair grew back, her appetite came back, and life went on with all of its tragedies and sorrows. Fortune favored the brave, and she hadn’t let herself cry about her brush with death. Not even once. 

As she heard the explosion go off outside the bar she was silently celebrating in, she said to herself, “Well, isn’t this just my luck?”

* * * * *

Maggie was nearly knocked off her bar stool by the blindingly bright light that flashed straight through the windows and the sonic boom that followed. Waves of impact pushed her against the countertop and shook the bottles from their shelves, sending them crashing to the floor. Maggie covered her head with her arms as the glass rained down on her. She already had enough scars, she didn’t need anymore.

And then the bar plunged into darkness. 

The TV snapped off, the music on the speakers went silent, and every single light in the bar was extinguished. Not even her cell phone worked anymore. 

When Maggie dared to lift her head up and look outside, there wasn’t a single light left that she could see. Every streetlight and window was dark. It wasn’t just them; the entire power grid had been destroyed by whatever that weird light was. 

It didn’t take long for everyone to start panicking.

“It’s the terrorists!” one man yelled out above all the dazed cries of confusion and fear. “They’ve come for us! We’ve been nuked!”

“No, it’s Satan!” a woman cried. “The day of reckoning has come for the sinners! Repent now or suffer the consequences forever in eternal damnation!”

As the Holy Roller launched into a Hail Mary, another conspiracy theorist piped up. Someone who still had a shred of reason and sanity left tried to calm the crowd by saying they just blew a fuse. It was an old building, shit like this happened. It was nothing to panic about.

But Maggie wasn’t so sure. 

Something wasn’t right about all of this. A glass on the bar was rattling, the liquid inside sloshing back and forth, shaken by an unknown force. Under her feet, the ground vibrated and reverberated through her legs, tying her stomach into queasy, uneasy knots. Slowly, she turned her head away from the screaming patrons and looked outside, afraid of what she might find staring back at her.

There was nothing to see but black. 

Maggie closed her useless eyes and listened hard. There was a thundering in the distance, like the hooves of a hundred stampeding wildebeest pounding on the African savannah… and they were getting closer. Too close. 

Then she heard the sound that would haunt her nightmares forever. Over the roar of screams, a strange mechanical hum blasted through the street. It reminded her of a war trumpet rallying its troops into battle. 

On instinct, Maggie ducked under the nearest table. 

Little earthquakes shook the bar as footsteps pounded on the pavement outside. Maggie gritted her teeth and gripped the floor with her hands as if her whole life depended on it. She wasn’t stupid – whatever was making that noise could not be human. 

The humming grew louder and louder until she had to cover her ears. And still, the thing came. The Grim Reaper wasn’t whispering softly in her ear anymore; he was banging down her front door and demanding she come with him.

“No,” she whispered under her breath. She wasn’t going to succumb to death, not after all she had already survived. Not when she was just getting her life back together again.

That’s when the shooting broke out. The windows shattered as bullets penetrated the thick glass as if it were made of paper. There was nothing Maggie could do but watch as the patrons began to fall. One by one, like a row of dominoes, they tumbled to the ground, bleeding and broken, their life’s essence leaking out of them in rivers, staining the floor red. It was a straight up massacre. 

She was in such a state of shock that she didn’t begin to fear for her own life until she heard the scratch-scratch of nails on pavement. Her memory flashed back to a sleepover she’d had with her friends when she was twelve. They’d all decided to be big girls and watch a scary movie against their parent’s wishes, and Arachnophobia had been the movie of choice. At the time, Maggie had prided herself in being the only girl to come out of it without a profound fear of spiders. She had a feeling that was about to change. 

These suckers sounded big. 

Maggie had to think fast. She peaked out from under her sanctuary and noticed the body of one of the fallen in front of the table. Half the man’s right arm had been blown off and there were bullet holes in his chest. His dead eyes were wide open and staring at her, as if he was calling out for help even in death. There was nothing she could do for him, but there was something he could do for her. 

She grabbed his left arm and dragged him under the table. The adrenaline was pumping so strongly in her veins that he didn’t feel heavy at all. It was like being high all over again. She was no longer thinking; she was just doing. Anything to survive, right? 

Quickly, she pulled the corpse on top of her body, using him as a human shield. She laid her head on the sticky floor and closed her eyes. Years of meditation aided her as she slowed her breath down to a crawl. If anything dared to peek its creepy crawly head under the table, all it would see was the man, and if it happened to catch a glance at her, she’d be just another dead body. 

In the silence that followed, time seemed to slow down. Every breath was agonizing as she waited, anticipating the moment one of the things would find her and she would finally meet the Reaper face-to-face. It wasn’t enough to shoot everyone down, something was inside the bar checking to make sure there weren’t any survivors left alive. Inhuman screeches and hisses penetrated her consciousness as the beings scurried all around her. 

Occasionally, there was a scream when they found someone left alive. The screams never lasted very long, though. There was no mercy with these creatures. 

Then there was nothing. The world became eerily quiet without the familiar blare of the Red Sox game on TV or the honking of cars outside. It was like the earth had fallen into a black hole and there was nothing left but Maggie and the cold rotting corpse on top of her.

* * * * *

Running became the only thing she knew. Maggie never stayed in one place for very long. It was no longer an option for her or anyone else left alive. She saw the occasional survivor scrounging for food like she was, but she never stuck around long enough to chat. They were all cagey with wild, desperate eyes that made Maggie cringe.

She hoped she didn’t look like that. 

In a way, she had grown comfortable with her new existence. It wasn’t like she’d had much to begin with before the invasion. Being diagnosed with cancer had been the kiss of death for her social life. Shallow teenagers didn’t have room in their schedules for a girl with holes in her head, and she’d driven away what few people she had left as soon as she was well enough to be on her own. Her parents hadn’t been happy when they found out their missing 18 year old daughter was a drug addict and convicted felon. They’d been ashamed, had practically disowned her on the spot. How could she have done this to them after they’d fought so hard for her to live? How could she have wasted her second chance at life on meth and heroin? She hadn’t wasted a single word trying to explain. 

She hadn’t bothered to tell them about the baby either. No, that was a secret she wasn’t sure she’d ever share. And now, with her family most likely dead and buried in the rubble that used to be Boston, it didn’t matter anyway.

Nothing really mattered anymore.

Her past was just another story, paper pages flapping in the wind. The tarantulas and their Transformer-like buddies didn’t care if you were a Harvard law student or a homeless junkie in the street.

In the end, everybody died just the same. And for that, Maggie considered herself almost lucky.

Every wrong turn she’d taken had become strangely beneficial to her in a world where E.T. had landed and decided he didn’t want to be friends after all. While others struggled to adjust and get by, Maggie thrived. Doing time at Framingham had taught her every tactic she needed to survive another day. 

She’d learned how to be elusive. She knew how to become invisible so she could go about her business undetected. She knew it was better to travel light and not put too much stock into her meager possessions. The less she had, the faster she could move and the less she could be hustled for by one of those desperate, wild-eyed survivors. She didn’t trust them anymore than she had trusted the busted up women in prison who’d leered at her like she was fresh meat – scars and track marks and all.

Most importantly, Maggie had learned how to defend herself… to a point. In hand-to-hand combat, she did alright. She wasn’t a weapons expert or anything, but she could move fast with a sharp object. It had been like hitting the jackpot the day she’d found a pack of hunting knives in an abandoned house.

From that point on, she never went anywhere without a knife strapped to her thigh or tucked into her boot. She had become the lone wolf, the scavenger of what was left behind of humanity.

* * * * *

Maggie didn’t know where she was going as she made her way out of the city and into the suburbs. All she knew was that she needed to get away from all the destruction and death. Boston was alien central, and anyone with half a brain would have gotten the Hell out of there. She hadn’t looked death in the face and spit in it for nothing.

Deep down, Maggie knew she wasn’t entirely equipped to survive the apocalypse on her own forever. If she ever got caught by the aliens, she was screwed. The cat always got the mouse eventually, no matter how many holes the mouse found to hide in. There always came a point when the mouse got too brave or just too weary of running and made a fatal mistake. A mouse had teeth, but it was no match for a cat. Just like Maggie had knives, but could they stand up to an advanced alien race? She didn’t ever want to find out. 

Maybe she had just gotten too tired when it happened, or maybe her luck had finally run out. She’d been low on food for days and grocery stores were becoming fewer and farther in between. The ones she did find were mostly picked dry or infested with the aliens. There had already been way too many close calls for her liking. 

She thought she was in luck when she found an abandoned rest stop off the highway. They always had snack machines, and maybe there were a few packages of crackers and cans of Coke left over. God, when was the last time she’d had an ice cold Coke? Even a warm one would do at this point. Her mouth was practically watering as she carefully snuck up to the building with one of her knives clutched tightly in her hand. 

Everything was quiet, not a creepy crawly in sight. 

Maggie made a beeline for the machines as soon as she saw them. The glass was shattered, no surprise there. She wasn’t expecting them to be in pristine condition as long as there was something, anything, inside for her to take. Whoever had looted it before her had been kind. There were still a few candy bars and bags of chips left in the machine. 

“Fuck yeah!” Maggie cheered to herself as she reached in to grab the remaining candy. There was nothing like a Snickers bar to satisfy the stabbing hunger pains that had been plaguing her the past few days.

Leaning back against the wall opposite the candy machine, Maggie ripped open the wrapper and took a bite out of the Snickers. It was absolute heaven in her mouth. The chocolate melted on her tongue and lips, and she licked at them greedily before taking another bite. She felt damn near orgasmic as she closed her eyes and savored each and every inch of the chocolate bar. These were the little things she lived for now, the little pockets of normalcy that popped up here and there. They reminded her of what life had been like, and what it could be like again if she survived long enough to see the day the aliens finally left. 

If she rationed carefully, the stash of chips and candy bars would last her the whole week. Maggie swept up the remaining food and stuffed it into her backpack. She had just begun to inspect the soda machine when she heard the familiar drone of those robotic bastards. 

“Shit!” 

She did not need this right now. Maggie gave up on the soda machine without a second thought and looked around frantically, searching for somewhere she could hide. The only place close enough was the abandoned restroom, and she sure as hell hoped the creepy crawlies wouldn’t have the sudden urge to start snooping around in the ladies’ room. 

Maggie pushed through the doors and cursed when she found the trash can inside completely empty. It wouldn’t work as a barricade, but she shoved it against the door anyway. The ground was already shaking. Maggie ran to the very last stall and locked the door. 

“Like it’ll do much,” she thought to herself mirthfully. 

She’d seen the way the aliens moved. They could do some straight up Spiderman bullshit with the way they skittered up walls and crawled on ceilings as if gravity itself had no bearing on the creatures. If they wanted her, they would take her.

She was just grateful to be far too old for what they did to the kids. She’d seen them too, wandering around like zombies with those bugs on their backs. They gave her the creeps with their blank stares and aimless marching back and forth. Kids weren’t supposed to look like that; they were supposed to be brimming with life.

Briefly, she wondered if the son she’d only seen for a moment had gotten away or if he too was a mindless drone. She hoped he was safe somewhere. If this was her endgame, she wanted to go out imagining a nice life for him, one free from the harsh realities she had faced nearly every day of her life after the cancer. 

Maggie gripped the knife in her hand a little tighter and shook her head. No, she couldn’t think like that. Now was not the time to quit. It was the time fight and do whatever she could to rain down misery on the creatures who were wreaking havoc on _her_ home planet. She would stab those critters until the last breath left her body.

She was almost willing the door to open, just so she could get it over with already. All the anticipation was making her hands shake. 

“Time to see what you’re really made of, girl,” she murmured, her voice echoing in the empty chamber. 

Maggie hopped off the toilet seat and pushed the stall door back open. Her feet were light on the cement floor as she crept up to the door and poised her knife to strike. 

Only the aliens didn’t come knocking on the door, they blew the whole fucking thing in. Maggie was thrown back and hit the ground with a crash. Fragments of the shattered door littered her body as the mechanical bastard stood in the wreckage and aimed its laser beams at her. The entire set up had been a trap from the start. Maggie couldn’t believe she had been so stupid.

As the thing lifted its shooting arm, Maggie rolled out of the line of fire just in time to feel the blast of the bullets exploding where she’d been only a second before. 

She leaped up and stared the robot in its cold, metallic head. 

“You want me, don’t you?” she challenged it, suddenly feeling cocky. It answered with a hum and a raise of its arm. “You gotta catch me first!”

Without thinking, Maggie flung her knife at the mechanical beast. The knife deflected off the metal head and distracted it long enough for Maggie to hit the ground running and barrel through the hole it had made in the wall. The robot was fast, but she believed she was faster. She had to believe it because there was no looking back. Unflinching confidence was the only thing she had left on her side. 

The ground exploded behind her feet, but somehow she managed to stay a few steps ahead. Even with the inevitable stumbles, she was gaining distance. It wasn’t giving chase the way she would have expected. The forest she’d come from was ahead of her, looming nearer and nearer as a safe haven. If she could only make it there, she could take cover. It would be hard pressed to find her among the trees. 

What she wasn’t counting on was for the enemy to suddenly come bursting out in front of her – another robot and a whole group of the creepy crawlies awaited her. 

“You’ve got to be kidding me!” she shouted up to the sky. 

Surrounded by the aliens, Maggie froze between her attackers. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She reached down to her ankle and pulled another knife out of her boot. She held it in front of her as if the shine of the steel would deter them. 

It didn’t. 

They kept closing in on her. The robot targeted her and covered her chest in the beam of its laser.

“Just get it over with already,” she murmured as she closed her eyes. She didn’t need to see her body riddled with even more holes before her stubborn heart finally stopped beating. 

And then an amazing thing happened. Shots fired, but they weren’t at her. Maggie braced herself, expecting the collide of bullets against her ribcage and the inevitable pain that would follow, but there was nothing. She remained unharmed. Maggie opened her eyes and saw an even more unbelievable sight – a group of leather clad men shooting the shit out of the aliens. 

They were shouting and whooping like a troop of unruly monkeys with guns. Their bullets hit the legs of the creepy crawlies, crippling them enough so they were no longer a threat to her if they suddenly remembered their original target. Maggie wasn’t planning on waiting for the aliens to remember her, either. The gun happy degenerates were just the miracle she needed to make a clean getaway from the scene. 

Maggie rounded the growing carnage and made a break for the trees again. She didn’t pay attention to the shouts of the men.

“Where do you think you’re going?” a gruff male voice asked as a tremendous weight smashed into her from behind.

She hit the forest floor face first, nearly stabbing herself with her own knife in the process. The man whipped her around onto her back and straddled her hips. Maggie tried to rise up, but he shoved her back down. He was strong and heavy, and the run had taken its toll on her. She was already having trouble catching her breath without a man twice her size pressing down on her chest and squeezing all the air out from her lungs. 

“Now what do we have here?” he inquired as he grabbed her face roughly with his hand. He looked her over like she was a mail order bride. She already didn’t like the way his eyes crawled over her skin. “A pretty little thing you are. What were you doing out there all by your lonesome?” 

“Staying away from the likes of you,” she growled back.

She didn’t care if it was a stupid move to make, she cleared her throat and spit in his face. He recoiled away from her, but recovered before she could even try to wiggle her way out from beneath him. She couldn’t even get a knee up to his groin for an easy shot. 

Anger flashed in his eyes as he wiped the glob of phlegm from his cheek, and then he laughed. He laughed like she had just told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. 

“Oh yeah, me and the boys are gonna have fun with you. We like ‘em feisty.” 

Maggie liked the sound of that even less. 

Remembering the knife still clutched in her hand, Maggie lifted her arm up and slashed the blade forward. With a sickeningly sweet rip of cloth and skin, the knife cut into the man’s bicep. He grunted in surprise and grabbed her wrist before she could make another slash. Blood spurted out of the wound, yet it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to convince him she was too much trouble and to leave her alone.

He squeezed her wrist until she was forced to drop the knife and it went clattering into the blanket of dead leaves. She looked him straight in the eyes and glared at him, willing herself not to break. Not while he was still pinning her down. She refused to give him the satisfaction. 

“Let. Me. Go,” she grunted through gritted teeth as she tried to wrench her wrist out of his grip.

“You’re gonna pay for that one, sweetheart.” 

He gripped her wrist even tighter, and she began to seriously worry he was going to crush every bone and render her hand useless. He used the hold he had to haul her up onto her feet and pull her roughly against his body. The cold steel tip of a gun pressed against her temple and Maggie’s blood went cold.

“One wrong move and I blow your brains out,” he said. “Now move! I want to show the boys what we’re having for dessert tonight.”

* * * * *

Over the next two weeks, Maggie wished every second of every day that Billy Pope had blown her brains out.

They’d stripped her of her backpack, her weapons, her clothing. Worst of all, they’d stripped her of her dignity. The aliens weren’t the enemy anymore. She barely remembered the good old days of running for her life. There was no running from a rowdy gang of ex-cons with guns who guarded her 24-7 and came back from every battle high off the kill and hungry with lust.

A little part of her died every time Billy shoved her against the floor and forced his cock inside of her. 

Yet he hadn’t killed everything just yet. There was still a fire burning somewhere deep inside of her, somewhere she had kept protected and hidden away. It was the fire that had kept her going through chemo when all she’d wanted to do was let the last few drops of life leak out of her. It’d kept her going after the invasion when it would’ve been easier to roll over and let the aliens shoot her dead. 

After the first few times, she learned how to turn her emotions off and go somewhere else when it was time for her to “serve her purpose,” as they liked to say. She didn’t even feel it anymore, not really. What was one more bruise, scrape, or sore muscle? She’d dealt with worse pain than this in her life. This was nothing. The end of mankind was near, and maybe she wouldn’t have to suffer for much longer. Eventually they would get sloppy. They would pick the wrong battle and would end up getting blown to pieces. Then she would be free. 

She just had to wait for that day.

* * * * *

Maggie looked dumbfounded at the gun tossed at her feet. John Pope stood above her with an expectant look on his face, like he was waiting for her to do something.

“Well,” he started as he kicked the gun a little closer to her. “Aren’t you gonna pick it up?”

Maggie was wary. Was this a stupid trick to give her false hope before taking it away again? It was bad enough she was their prisoner, she wouldn’t be their sideshow act too. 

“No,” she said flatly. 

Maggie didn’t know John Pope the way she knew some of the others in the gang, but she’d heard enough camp talk to know he was their leader and that he hadn’t done a damn thing to stop what his brother or friends had done to her. He’d turned a blind eye, and for that? She could never trust him. He was as bad as the rest of them as far as she was concerned. 

“What’s the matter? Not fond of guns? Hate to break it to ya, but we don’t got the luxury anymore to shy away from a little fire power. You want to do something more than sit around in this room all day, you gotta learn the ropes.” 

Maggie scowled up at him hatefully. She couldn’t believe the words coming out of his mouth. As if she’d asked to be taken by them! As if she was sitting in a locked room all day because she wanted to.

“There’s nothing I want more than to be out of here and fighting them,” she spat out. She left out the part about wanting to rip the cocks off of every single one of his men with her bare hands.

Maggie glanced back down at the gun. They must have become pretty confident that they had broken her spirit if they were offering her a weapon. She forced her aching muscles to move as she grabbed the gun from the floor and stood up.

It was pure instinct to point the gun’s barrel at Pope. Kill the leader and the rest would scatter –  
simple Gang Busting 101. 

“Ah, ah, ah,” Pope said in a sing-song voice as he gestured at the gun. “Not so fast, darlin’. That gun’s not even loaded.” 

Maggie’s arm sagged with the weight of defeat. She knew this had been a trick. Why hadn’t she trusted her instincts? 

Pope, the bastard, thought it was hilarious. He laughed again as he reached into his pocket and revealed a handful of bullets. “Now if you can be a good girl and promise not to shoot me, I’ll teach you how to use that. You got my guarantee that you’ll be the best shot in this city after I get done with you.” 

Maggie was silent for a moment as she weighed her options. On the one hand, she hated the entire gang of renegades and didn’t want to consort with them as if they were all the best of fucking friends. They reminded her too much of the women in Framingham, and she had promised herself she would never get caught up in a crowd like that again the day she’d taken her first steps in the outside world. 

On the other, he was offering to teach her everything she needed to know to survive in this brave new world. If that meant she wouldn’t be treated as a body to use and abuse as the men pleased, she could bite back her hatred long enough to learn some skills. 

Besides, they might come in handy one day.

“Fine,” Maggie agreed. “You can start by showing me how to load this thing.”

* * * * *

Pope had kept his promise. After only a month of hard training, Maggie was deadly with a weapon in her hand. Shotgun, rifle, crossbow – she could shoot them all with perfect accuracy.

That little fire she’d kept protected burned brighter with every successful shot she took. There was power in learning how to harness all the pain and anger she harbored for her captives into the crook of her finger as she took a shot at a cootie. Every time she killed one, she imagined it was Billy or Cueball. She saw their legs coming out from beneath them as she stood tall and confident, looked them right in the eye, and shot them into oblivion.

It was the fantasy that kept her going day after day. 

As time passed, everyone seemed to forget what Maggie had once been to them. They treated her like she’d always been a member of their renegade gang, but Maggie never forgot who she was or what she had been. She never forgot that while she was allowed to roam, she was still wearing invisible chains around her ankles.

And then there were the things Pope made her do. It was every man for himself, Pope had said. He didn’t view the battle as strictly aliens against humans. In the fight for survival, only the strongest and cruelest among them would make it. It was his twisted take on Darwinism.

If they came upon someone who had something he wanted, he took it. Didn’t matter if it was a man, a woman, or a family with small children. Young or old, Pope didn’t care. It made her sick to her stomach to know that the food she spooned into her mouth had been taken from someone who’d been counting on it to survive another day out there.

It was even more awful when he started bringing her along on his missions. Maggie was his star pupil, and he seemed to get some kind of sick joy out of forcing her to do his dirty work for him. It had been a mistake to ever admit to him that she’d done time too, that the reason she had survived out there at all was because she’d had experience behind bars and wasn’t entirely clueless in defending herself. He thought it made them kindred spirits. Maggie never confirmed or denied it. She just gritted her teeth and did as she was told, binding her time until she could make a break for it. It was the only thing she could do. If she said no to his demands, he’d shoot her too. She was good, but not as good as Pope. He liked to remind her of that little fact as often as he could.

She wondered what their victims thought of her, a young woman among a bunch of ex-cons, taking orders as if she was some brain-washed groupie, or worse, just like one of _them_. There were days when she wondered about herself, too. Where did the line between the real Maggie end and the Maggie just trying to survive begin? Was there even a difference anymore? Could there be a difference in the world they lived in? 

Pope had managed to survive all this time. There were even moments when she thought he might be right. The world had turned to shit, yet the gang thrived among the wreckage of human civilization. He knew what he was doing, and in a strange way, Maggie felt safe in the group.

Now that she could protect herself from them, it was the best place to be if she wanted to see another day. 

By the time Pope told them about a group of civilians he’d spied during a ranging for cooties to kill, Maggie was stronger than ever. While some of the others were a little too trigger happy, Maggie was patient and calculating. She’d learned to be an observer as much as she had learned to be a fighter. Maggie was the one who lurked in the shadows – quiet, deadly, and poised to strike at a second’s notice.

That’s why she’d had to snort to herself at Pope’s idea.

They did fine against individuals and small groups, but this was an entire battalion he was planning to go up against. This group had weapons and disciplined fighters. He talked a good game, but Maggie still had her doubts. They could all die in the process if anything went wrong and they caught the attention of the aliens.

One nuke and it was goodbye – for Pope, for the civilians, for everyone. Even her. 

Maggie knew better than to question it, though. Better to go along with it and act like Pope was a genius. Give that big old ego of his an extra boost, and maybe one day he’d get so trusting of her that she could escape. 

One day, she promised herself. One day her luck would change and she’d find herself in a better place.

* * * * *

“You could join us, fight back.”

The words echoed inside her head as Maggie stood back in an abandoned alleyway, waiting for the overly cocky teenager to come back with Pope’s demands. It was ridiculous to even consider the proposition at all. What did a boy soldier under the tutelage of his dear old dad know about her situation?

He’d already proven himself to be a complete idiot during Pope’s interrogation.

It had been almost satisfying to knock him to the ground and take him down a few notches in the tunnels. He thought he could get the jump on her, probably assuming she was just a weak little girl with a big gun she didn’t know how to shoot, and how much trouble could she be against a big strong fighter like him?

Well, she had sure shown him.

But still, his offer lingered in her mind. It tempted her with the sweet seduction of a way out and stirred up the fantasies she’d pushed to the deep corners of her mind.

This could be her chance, and she didn’t have to join his group to fight back. Not if she didn’t want to.

When he came back with a doctor instead of the 50 cal, Maggie could’ve slapped him. Was the entire army mentally deficient? Pope wasn’t going to like this; she could already hear the verbal beatdown he’d give the kid for failing to appease such a simple request. Hopefully he wouldn’t blame her for their attempt at espionage… or whatever it was they were trying to do. 

He didn’t speak a single word to her on the way back. 

Maggie kept her gun trained on him nonetheless, almost daring him to make another stupid move. He was reckless and naïve enough to try again. Briefly, she wondered how he’d managed to stay alive this long, taking the chances he did. After all, she’d been careful and look where she had ended up.

The kid was lucky he had a father left to keep an eye on him. Maybe his girlfriend kept him in check, too. She seemed to be cut from a tougher cloth than he was. A smarter one, too. At least she knew to keep her mouth shut during an interrogation.

* * * * *

It was the girlfriend, not the boy soldier, who inspired her to take the shots.

She reminded Maggie of herself – blonde, tough as nails, and strapped to the nines with guns. Or at least she had been, before Pope had taken all their weapons away. Her spirit was still unbroken.

When Billy started eyeing her the way he’d done the night he found Maggie, she snapped. She couldn’t let another person suffer the way she had. 

"You could join us, fight back." The words whispered in her head one more time as she stood up and took the chance of a lifetime. 

Bang, bang. Two shots, that’s all it took. And just like that, Maggie was free. 

“After they grabbed me three months ago, Billy – let’s just say he deserved to die. Cueball thought he was better ‘cause he brought chocolate. He wasn’t.”

She didn’t know why she revealed to the group why she’d done it, as if she owed them an explanation for saving their sorry lives. The pure elation running through her body at the first taste of freedom had loosened her tongue. 

Every single one of them was gawking at her, shocked at the sudden turn of events. Even the kid who’d planted the idea in the first place had his mouth hanging open in disbelief. 

Guess she’d been a little too convincing that she was one of Pope’s loyal lapdogs. 

“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked when she could no longer take the silence and the stares. “Let’s get outta here! Pope’s probably already out there sweet talking your leader out of all that heavy artillery you got stashed away back at camp.”

* * * * *

“You’re still here,” Hal Mason stated as he sidled up beside her.

Maggie didn’t turn around. The sun was just beginning to rise over the horizon, painting the gray sky with broad brushstrokes of crimson and gold, and she had never seen a more beautiful sight in her life. It was just another day for most, but for Maggie, it was a new beginning. A new life. A better life. 

“Yeah,” Maggie replied softly. “Guess I am.”

She looked back at him then. He was alone, neither his girl nor his dad were in sight. After putting a blade to his throat, she thought he might be afraid of her, or in the very least, a little wary. But he wasn’t. Hal was the only one who didn’t gape at her like she might snap again and shoot up the entire 2nd Mass.

“Are you gonna stay?” he asked, and she could’ve sworn she heard a hint of wishful thinking in his tone. 

She arched a brow at him in response and smirked. “Sounds like you want me to.”

He blushed. It was just a little coloring of rosy pink on his bare cheeks, but she caught it in the golden rays of the early morning sun. He had never looked so much like a boy than in that moment. 

“We could use a fighter like you on our side. A person with aim like yours is hard to come by these days.” 

“You’re not scared I might try to aim my gun at you again?”

“Nah,” he answered, kicking his feet against the broken gravel. “You did what you had to do back there. You fought back.” 

“And joined you,” she finished, a ghost of a smile on her lips. And for the first time in a long while, she almost felt like she could have laughed. What an ironic twist of fate this was.

Before he could get too cocky, she added, “I figure I can try my luck here for a while, see if the accommodations are any better than Pope’s.”

“We have sleeping bags,” Hal offered up. “They’re not much, but they’ll keep you warm at night.” 

“Perfect,” she replied, knowing the words to be true. She could get used to being a member of this ragtag team of fighters and civilians. “That’s all I need.”

Maggie took one last lingering look at the sun rising above the crumbling remains of what was once a great city. Inside, she still felt the jagged edges of the broken pieces of her heart pushing against her chest, but she knew that, in time, those too would mend. She was not the wreckage, but the sun that kept shining on. 

And maybe, just maybe, Maggie was one of the lucky ones after all.


End file.
